


Riftbusters

by lackofpatience



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition, Ghostbusters (Movies 1984-1989), Ghostbusters - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 05:20:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11730336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lackofpatience/pseuds/lackofpatience
Summary: Who you gonna send a raven to?Divine Justinia’s conclave has ended in disaster.  There were no survivors, and Thedas is slowly being consumed by chaos.  What’s a fledgling Inquisition to do?Well, desperate times call for desperate measures, and when word comes in about a small band of adventurers in the Hinterlands capable of closing rifts not through magic, butscience,it falls to them to mend the breach in the sky and defeat Corypheus before it’s too late.Starring Peter Trevelyan, Egon Lavellan, Ray Cadash, and Winston Adaar.  They ain’t afraid of no rift.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is, the dumbest thing I've ever written. Because sometimes you just need a break from the heavy stuff.

The Fade. Realm of dreams.

A young man stands blinking, dazed in the greenish light. A dwarf, he is more a stranger to this immaterial land than most, but the glowing figure at the top of the craggy staircase beckons him unerringly forward, anyway.

But then…

Spiders, ever-present bane of his homeland, creatures of nightmare given form, giving chase, promising death on eight swift legs…

Hands and feet scrabbling for purchase on impossible formations of rock…

An unknown woman reaching out, arm outstretched, grasping fingers seeking his shorter ones, mysterious mark on his palm glowing brightly with the very essence of the place they occupy, salvation only a hand span away…

In another world, another life, he’d save everybody.

But not this one.

One of the steps gives way beneath him, and he falls, screaming, into the abyss.


	2. Three Months Later

“It should go without saying that one can never get used to something like man’s willingness to give up in the face of adversity or the crushing pain of widespread disappointment and faithlessness. But you know what? You really do get used to it.”

“Cullen!”

“What? It’s true.”

Cassandra scoffs in disgusted dismay at her colleague’s cynicism, but as she turns her attention back to the distant forms of the Inquisition’s latest group of deserters making their way across the frozen lake and away from Haven, it’s difficult to put much conviction behind it.

“Perhaps for you, it is. I prefer to care.”

“Don’t tell me I don’t care,” comes the snappish reply, but while Cassandra immediately regrets her tone, she doesn’t apologize for it. This matters. It all matters, and Cullen knows as much, even if he’d rather downplay it at this point.

“Should we go after them, then?”

Cullen shakes his head, but she knows that he’s been considering it. “No point. A soldier’s only as good as his willingness to fight, and it’s faith that brought them all here in the first place. If that’s in short supply these days, then everything you’ve built here falling down around us is a symptom, not the problem we need to combat.” He sighs, prompting a worried look from Cassandra. “Besides, I can’t exactly blame them at this point.”

“Should I be concerned?”

“About what? Losing me?” A wry smile cuts through the tension marring the commander’s features. “Hardly. I’ve nowhere else to go, for one thing. If they do, more power to them.” He waves an arm dismissively towards the retreating figures before dropping it to his side, resignation taking over once again. “If we’re all going to die, we may as well choose our own terms.”

She wants to tell him not to say such things, that as long as they still stand, still fight, all is not lost. She really, really, wants to. But the simple fact of the matter is that it’s been three months since the disaster at the Conclave tore open the sky and ended all hope of achieving peace in the land. Three months since demons began pouring in from the Fade all across Thedas, slaughtering the wicked and innocent alike, bringing chaos to every corner of the land touched by the Breach. The erosion of their way of life was slower than it might have been, stymied by strong and stubborn peoples all across the continent banding together in defiance, but with no real way to stop the spread of the rifts, it was only a matter of time.

The Inquisition already lost. All that remains is to go down fighting.

 

***

 

“All right, is everyone in position?”

Amidst the screaming chaos of the Crossroads, the dwarven man’s query goes unnoticed by all save three others, situated evenly around the roiling centre of the carnage. The rift looms large and ugly above the road, right in the middle of what had been, mere hours before, a thriving trading post and refugee enclave. Since then, the people of the Hinterlands have been forced to scramble about and gather their meager belongings to once again flee their homes as this fresh new scar in their air drops demon after demon into their midst.

“Locked and loaded for bear, Ray!” shouts a tall, average-looking man clad in the light armour of a rogue. On his back, in place of weapons, he wears a heavy contraption, seemingly assembled from whatever materials were available at hand. Pipes and fans and sheared metal edges stick out on all sides, the whole thing suffused from within by the unmistakable glow of lyrium and roughly assembled into the general shape of a box, large enough to make his dwarven companion look rather ridiculous by comparison, near to being crushed by his own, matching, device.

The qunari stationed at the far side of the rift from his human compatriot, on the other hand, makes the machine look like little more than a light satchel. “Except we’re not fighting bears, Peter!” he calls against the din, keeping the rough-hewn rod of blown glass he holds (attached to the bulk of his pack by a leather grip and a long cord) pointed carefully at the ground. “And there are still way too many people around here, I can’t get a clear shot for longer than a second!”

“You worry too much, Winston,” Peter replies, he voice carrying effortlessly. “You’re a worrier. All we _need_ is a second, then people will rightfully know to back off. Isn’t that right, honey?” he asks of a shrieking woman carrying a baby as she runs directly in front of his outstretched wand and pays him no mind whatsoever. “See? She agrees!”

“Mm-hmm,” grunts Winston, unimpressed but squaring his shoulders somewhat for action, anyway.

“Height of the rift approximately four point six metres at apex, rate of pulses increasing at the expected commensurate rate, wind blowing northeasterly at-”

“Who, uh… Who ya talkin’ to over there, Egon?” Peter suddenly calls to the fourth member of the quartet, an elf nearly as tall as himself, Dalish battle robes seemingly thrown on as an afterthought to anything else, standing off to his left and nattering off a running technical narration of the proceedings.

Egon ends his spiel to gesture vaguely at the small, glowing spell wisp flitting annoying around his head, though he seems far more put out by the interruption. “I’m recording our first official test of the equipment in the Fade for future reference,” he replies, the elaborate, arcane vallaslin markings around his eyes creasing slightly in the middle as he frowns.

“To see where it all went wrong, more like,” grumbles Winston from his left. “I just don’t think we should be doing this for the first time with so many bystanders still hanging out in a panic. We were heading up to that rift up north, originally.”

“Yeah, and then this one happened,” Peter counters easily. “It’s fate! Besides, how are we ever going to get paid for this if no one but crazy apostates and rogue templars see us doing it?”

 _”Not_ that getting paid is our primary concern, mind,” Ray interjects, shooting Peter a look. “We’re here to help people!”

“Says the guy who went into debt with every Carta contact he has just to get these packs built. You’re not fooling anyone, Ray, you need the money! They break legs!”

“Because it’s so impossible that some people might actually just care,” Winston sighs. “Whatever, I guess I can’t talk. This time last week, I was killing demons for a living; if I’m gonna help put myself out of business, I’m gonna need to keep putting food on the table somehow. Just doesn’t seem very safe, is all.”

Egon carefully picks that moment to speak up. “Judging by the frequency of the pulses, the rift is getting ready to grow again. If we’re going to do this, it has be now, before more demons appear.”

“We’re wearing reactors powered by unrefined lyrium cores, Winston. This was _never_ going to be safe,” says Peter, readying his wand with a grin. “You heard the man, people! Throw ‘em!”

 

***

 

“Cassandra! Cullen!” Leliana calls, making her way over with characteristic deliberateness but decidedly _un_ characteristic excitement.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” asks Cassandra, automatically assuming the worst.

Leliana actually smiles, for what must be the first time Cassandra’s seen in weeks.

“Nothing,” she says, shaking her head before amending her statement. “Well, not nothing, _everything_ is still wrong, as usual, but I’ve received word from Mother Giselle, just outside of Redcliffe.”

“What is it, then? What’s happening out there?” asks Cullen, clearly uneasy with Leliana’s suddenly changed demeanor.

“Hope.”


End file.
